The Forgetting

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This explanation of forgetting in short-term memory assumes that memories leave a trace in the brain. A trace is some form of physical and/or chemical change in the nervous system. The only independent variable in this experiment was the time-interval, which started at the end of learning a list for the first time. The time-interval ended at the beginning of learning a list for the second time. The time-intervals between learning and relearning were the same as Ebbinghaus [ 8]: 20 minutes, 1 hour, 9 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 6 days and 31 days. For each time interval, 10 lists were learned and relearned (for the 9 hour interval only 9 lists were learned due to unforeseen circumstances).

These two answers summaries the main theories of forgetting developed by psychologists. The first answer is more likely to be applied to forgetting in short-term memory, the second to forgetting in long term memory. Ebbinghaus’ experimental method, like that of many of his peers, consisted of conducting a series of extensive tests on himself. He created hundreds of three-letter words, or “nonsense syllables” as he called them, like “wid”, “zof”, and “qax.”Anderson RB, Tweney RD (1997) Artifactual power curves in forgetting. Memory & Cognition 25: 724–730. The first words in the list are rehearsed more frequently because at the time they are presented they do not have to compete with other words for the limited capacity of the short-term store. This means that words early in the list are more likely to be transferred to long-term memory. Table 2. Time spent learning (session S1) and relearning (session S2) for each list with savings (Q) by Dros. Fleeing and still adamant that Sam is real, she locates Ash, whose daughter Lauren was Sam's friend and died in the same crash. She finds Lauren's drawings underneath wallpaper in Ash's apartment, and tries to convince him they were made by his daughter. However, he also dismisses her and claims he never had a daughter, and calls the police. Shaken by Telly's certainty, he looks at the drawings again, and suddenly remembers his daughter and losing her. Myung IJ, Kim C, Pitt MA (2000) Toward an explanation of the power law artifact: Insights from response surface analysis. Memory & Cognition 28: 832–840.

Tulving (1974) argued that information would be more readily retrieved if the cues present when the information was encoded were also present when its retrieval is required. For example, if you proposed to your partner when a certain song was playing on the radio, you will be more likely to remember the details of the proposal when you hear the same song again. The song is a retrieval cue – it was present when the information was encoded and retrieved. Rubin, David C.; Hinton, Sean; Wenzel, Amy (1999). "The precise time course of retention". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 25 (5): 1161–1176. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.25.5.1161. hdl: 10161/10146. de Bot K, Stoessel S (2000) In search of yesterday's words: Reactivating a long-forgotten language. Applied Linguistics 21: 333–353. Nelson TO (1978) Detecting small amounts of information in memory: Savings for nonrecognized items. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 4: 453.

Author Contributions

Be clear and confident. When you are clear about the information, there is little room for the audience to question your information or to search for a deeper meaning in it. The previous accounts of forgetting have focused primarily on psychological evidence, but memory also relies on biological processes. For example, we can define a memory trace as: The brain consists of a vast number of cells called neurons, connected to each other by synapses. Synapses enable chemicals to be passed from one neuron to another . These chemicals, called neurotransmitters, can either inhibit or stimulate the performance of neurons.

Wagenaar WA (1986) My memory: a study of autobiographical memory over six years. Cognitive Psychology 18: 225–252. Averell, Lee; Heathcote, Andrew (2011). "The form of the forgetting curve and the fate of memories". Journal of Mathematical Psychology. 55: 25–35. doi: 10.1016/j.jmp.2010.08.009. hdl: 1959.13/931260. Ebert, Roger (September 24, 2004). " 'The Forgotten' far from memorable drama". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved May 12, 2017– via rogerebert.com.

The Replication Experiment

Displacement theory provided a good account of how forgetting might take place in Atkinson & Shiffrin’s (1968) model of short-term memory. However, it became clear that the short-term memory store is much more complex than proposed in Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model (re: working memory). However, when the material is being repeated at strategically spaced intervals, the brain reconstructs the memory and strengthens it in the process. These specific time intervals between multiple learning sessions are essential. They allow the brain to recover between repetitions and consolidate the learning. So why has Spain's right reacted with such hysteria? Rightwing radio stations, politicians and church leaders warn of a Pandora's box of dark, terrible forces. The real reason for this fury is to do with the deal under which Spanish democracy was brokered. After Franco's followers gave up power they received a promise that no one would be tried, pursued or even reminded of the abuses committed. A 1977 amnesty law made sure no one could be held to account. When looking at the shapes of the four curves in Fig 2, savings after 1 day (or 2 days) seems higher than expected. Ebbinghaus [ 8] notices this as well but merely writes it off as a discrepancy from his fitted curve (see above) that still falls within the error bars ([ 8], p. 62). He clearly did not trust this data point because in his text from 1885 [ 9] he reports that he later had replicated this 24 hour data point. The replicated data for this point gave a very similar score, so we must consider it a valid measurement. Jenkins and Dallenbach [ 50], however, interpreted the discrepancy as an effect of sleep, which motivated them to investigate this closer in an experiment on the effect of sleep on forgetting. They also refer to the forgetting curve by Radossawljewitsch [ 16], who also found higher savings after both 1 and 2 days (0.689 and 0.609, resp.) compared with after 8 hours (0.474). To them, this is suggestive of a very strong effect of sleep, but Finkenbinder [ 17] points out that Radossawljewitsch's 8-hour data point may not be reliable, because these lists were all relearned during the afternoon, when there was less rapid learning resulting in fewer savings. He, therefore, suggests using a corrected savings score at 8 hours of 0.66, which is not unreasonable given that Ebbinghaus also corrected his savings scores for time-of-day effects, in some cases up to 13%. Even if savings would be 0.66 at 8 hours, however, the 1 day savings score is still higher than the 8 hour score and the 2 day savings is still higher than what one would expect. Though providing us with a superior fit, a disadvantage of the summed exponential is that there are no memory models that explain why forgetting might have this shape. As remarked by several authors investigating the shape of learning and forgetting [ 35, 38, 40], simply fitting sums of exponentials is expected to yield progressively better fits for the simple reasons that any function may be approximated by such a sum, which is related to the Laplace transformation.